[EsotericForest]

HOW DARE YOU! Sorry, I have a think for rook/crows/ravens

[Ramonb]

Maybe saying its the vocabulary isn't the most accurate way for me to describe my frustration. Maybe it would be better to say "distracting phrases that imply substance but only serve to distract." Or maybe another way would be to say that its overly "artsy." Here is an example that I came across last night, and maybe it means something, and maybe it doesn't: "Under the ragged Spiritwalker robe-its orange faded to dusty rust beneath the endless sun-his gray skin had darkened into an olive green, as if his father's blood had answered this wastleland's ancient call." (DG, page 19). See what does that mean? There seems to be a correlation between the color of his skin and his father being a Jaghut...ok, I understand that, but what is this mess about his father being a Jaghut, Icarium's skin color, and a wastleland's ancient call. Now, I can be totally wrong here as I haven't read any farther, but why add the part about the wasteland's ancient call....it implies a correlation between Icarium's skin color and the wasteland. Unless there is more to that, it was only an unnecessary distraction, and, IMHO, an an example of being overly "artsy", and I see phrases like this all over the place. I trudge through them because I want to read the story, but the story would be a much much smoother read without them....unless of course, they actually have substance.

If it had been written like this I would have had no complaints: "Under the ragged Spiritwalker robe-its orange faded to dusty rust beneath the endless sun-his gray skin had darkened into an olive green, hearkening to his father's bloodline."

Here are some from GOTM. Its not that the vocab is confusing, its more about the way in which it was written. "The Vanes silence announced the sudden falling off of the sea breeze that came clambering over the ragged walls of Mock's hold, then it creaked back to life as the hot, spark-scattered and smoke filled breath of the Mouse Quarter reached across the city to sweep the promontory's heights." Basically that says that the air and smoke from the Mouse Quarter reached its way to the cities hieghts. Why use anthropomorphism with Mock's Vane; why say "smoke filled breath"....just say smoke/air/pungent air/seared air/choking smoke. Sorry if I'm rambling, its just that I have to rephrase far too many sentences in my own words while reading, but I like the story so I do it....but dag gone it I can vent, and ultimately, its phrases and word choices like that that made me put down GOTM over 10 times before I finally just decided to stick it out.

This post has been edited by Ramonb: 16 May 2010 - 02:04 PM

[EsotericForest]

At times I feel SE adds paragraphs or sentences into his book that seem to be completely irrelevant to the current story-line, but I feel like he does it to give his books more of a genuine feel for humanity. A better way to put it is that you feel that you're actually witnessing a conversation between two real people, instead of just reading a story. Granted, some things are said that make very little sense...you just have to roll with it I suppose.

[Ramonb]

EsotericForest, on 16 May 2010 - 02:01 PM, said:

At times I feel SE adds paragraphs or sentences into his book that seem to be completely irrelevant to the current story-line, but I feel like he does it to give his books more of a genuine feel for humanity. A better way to put it is that you feel that you're actually witnessing a conversation between two real people, instead of just reading a story. Granted, some things are said that make very little sense...you just have to roll with it I suppose.

I'm rolling with it, the story is pretty intense so far, but I just can't stop thinking how much more I would like it if it was less "artsy" and a tad more straight forward.

[EsotericForest]

Well I will say this...Gardens of the Moon was pretty difficult for me to wrap my mind around when I first read it. A year later I'm reading it again, after making it through The Bonehunters...and now I feel like I'm reading Gardens of the Moon for the first time. It's amazing how everything makes sense, and now it's just awesome haha.

[worry]

Art gets artsy on occasion. What can ya do?

[Ramonb]

worrywort, on 16 May 2010 - 06:53 PM, said:

Art gets artsy on occasion. What can ya do?

No doubt. But if you look at the quote that I posted from GOTM, and read the paragraphs before and after it; a better way, IMHO, to phrase that line would have been: " The air, which was thick and reeked of burned blood from the recent onslaught of magery, wafted through the Mouse Quarter permeating the town." That can be considered artsy as well, but...to me, it creates a more focused mental picture. I often find myself reading a line in the book and having to rephrase it so that I can create a more concise mental image... thats all I'm saying.

[Salt-Man Z]

Ramonb, on 16 May 2010 - 07:08 PM, said:

"The air, which was thick and reeked of burned blood from the recent onslaught of magery, wafted through the Mouse Quarter permeating the town."

That's not artsy. That's...painful. It also cuts most of the visual impact of the sentence (the scattered sparks and everything about the Hold itself) as well as any and all auditory cues (given through Mock's Vane.) Sorry, but no go.

And on related note: I'll see you Stephen R. Donaldson, and raise you one Gene Wolfe.

[EsotericForest]

I agree...your "revision" isn't something I would want to read.

[hmqb]

ya for some reason when ever a start a new book in the series, i have no idea whats goingon. Especialy with GOM it was hilarious right as the book was ending I was like yes! i finnaly understand whats going on! The boom DG and am completly lost agian

[Sinisdar Toste]

@Ramonb - you sound like a stickler of some sort. "why anthropomorphize the vane" "why say this, why say that" - you just end up frustrating yourself and honestly, rearranging words because they sound "wrong" to you seems like twice as much work for no real benefit and could in fact cause you to lose some of the texts meaning.

the icarium passage is a good example. if his fathers blood is awakening to an ancient wastelands call then its a good bet that jaghut once lived in that wasteland. its part of SE's technique to drop in these hints to the lands past, building up the layers of history at every turn. just because you find it difficult to scry the meaning behind them doesn't mean its not there.

[Verjigorm]

I'm not a native speaker and therefore I can somewhat agree on the "heavy vocabulary". I read a lot in English and normally I just get meaning from context or skip the few words I don't know, but for SE I have to look up words quite regularly. Also some of the sentences develop a live of their own, fighting really hard to avoid that full stop as it will end their existence.
So, strictly sticking to the original question, I guess it can be said that the difficulty of the language might be one of the things that makes getting into the series difficult. But after that I guess something amazing happens. SE learns to use his language better and better the farther he gets into the books and viceversa my understanding of his literary style improves by the chapter.

[Mott]

I was pre-warned about the confusion potential in GotM but I found it more comforting than anything since I spend my days in a perpetual state of confusion.

I actually like Erikson's style a lot and I think his descriptions are great because as well as being vivid they also give hints to other happenings in a subtle manner. It makes the world a lot richer and it feels a lot less clumsy than other fantasy's.

I look up words sometimes if I don't get it from the context but I've started keeping a list on the computer because my memory is a bit dodgy at the moment.

[EsotericForest]

High Mage Quick Ben, on 17 May 2010 - 02:05 AM, said:

Especialy with GOM it was hilarious right as the book was ending I was like yes! i finnaly understand whats going on! The boom DG and am completly lost agian

See that was more of my problem with the series...which actually caused me to get 100 pages into Deadhouse Gates, and then set the series aside for many months actually.

[Salt-Man Z]

High Mage Quick Ben, on 17 May 2010 - 02:05 AM, said:

Especialy with GOM it was hilarious right as the book was ending I was like yes! i finnaly understand whats going on! The boom DG and am completly lost agian

I actually had that happen much earlier when I first read GotM. I feel I'm starting to get a handle on these "Malazans" and "Bridgeburners" and whatnot, and then--BAM! suddenly I'm reading about a bunch of guys in a tavern in Darujhistan?

[EsotericForest]

Salt-Man Z, on 17 May 2010 - 04:11 PM, said:

High Mage Quick Ben, on 17 May 2010 - 02:05 AM, said:

Especialy with GOM it was hilarious right as the book was ending I was like yes! i finnaly understand whats going on! The boom DG and am completly lost agian

I actually had that happen much earlier when I first read GotM. I feel I'm starting to get a handle on these "Malazans" and "Bridgeburners" and whatnot, and then--BAM! suddenly I'm reading about a bunch of guys in a tavern in Darujhistan?

Haha, I know exactly what you mean. I think Steven Erikson doesn't like to let his readers get too comfortable with their supposed "understanding" of the story. He likes to symbolically smack his readers in the face with a baseball bat occasionally to make sure they're paying attention

[Mentalist]

hmmm

not much I can add to what's been said.

to the OP: I doubt SE would want it written any other way.


the one defining feature that sets MBotF apart from everything else i've read in fantasy is that SE and ICE do not attempt to write a nice, concise story that has a beginning, a middle, and a satisfying conclusion. the very nature of the malazan project is to create a universe--one that has existed for millenia, and things are always going on. what the Book of the Fallen does, it offers us a mere glimpse on the history of the world--a few measly years (maybe decades) out of a millenia-long stretch of history, where something was always happening. The way a reader is tossed into a living, breathing world without any explanation and is expected to just "take it all in" is actually (to me, at least) what makes it all seem so REAL. the very fact that stops to tell you as the reader "and this is what we are talking about, for those who've just joined us" portrays the fact that the Malazan world doesnt exist for the readers--it exists, just because it does. to those who expect "traditional" fantasy, this is certainly off-putting---they feel that the author doesn't care about them. but if you approach the book open-minded, you'll realize that it is actually more REAL than anything else you're likely to find out there. and, just like real life, it's always complicated, but that's part of the allure. it's still escapism, but you feel like this could almost be real.


personally, when i first loaned GotM from the library, I've read it, I was confused, but not too impressed. It was the very ending, the convo between Whiskeyjack and Dujek of things to come, and the overarching sense of EPICNESS that those 3 or 4 pages conveyed that made me loan DG 2 months lated when I came home from Uni for the summer. the confusion at the start just made my brain work harder to try to figure out what exactly happened and "what did I miss".

personally, I find that the best way describe MBotF is somethimes as a history textbook. stuff that happened before is often influenced, but it's not like you ever fully recap what you've learned last year---it's just assumed that you know it. and if you've skipped a class, well you can still piece it together,but it'll just take so much longer to do.

[beautiful apple]

I am reading Gardens of the Moon for my third attempt at reading the series. It took me nearly a year to get through GotM the first time. Then I got busy with college in the middle of the second book and had to re-read GotM during the summer. By the time I started the second book the second time I was back to college... now I'm reading it again! Now I've graduated and I can focus on the series.

I am finding that I LOVE reading it now. I've read it once all the way through and everything makes sense! I've bought books 1-4 to encourage myself to continue with the series. Now that I have gotten through the first book and know what to expect it's very easy to keep going with it! It makes sense eventually!!!

Namaste

[Panador]

I still remember this 'problem' very well... I was actually close to stopping just after a few pages and just kept on reading because I had heard only good things about Malazan. Damn I'm happy I did, still... for me it was the problem was the following:

Too much too soon. You get overwhelmed with tons of information, weird names (Ganoes?), in the middle of a riot and so on. The book is written like it expects the reader to know all the basics so he can understand all of it. Imo the Malazan series just HAS to be read twice. The first time through you don't get a lot of the stuff or you just get it much later, when the necessary background information has finally been made available, often in a completely different context.

I've just yesterday started reading the series again, now Mock's Hold, Malaz City, the Bridgeburner with the broken fiddle etc. all make sense (although I'm still stumped who the nameless Bridgeburner commander in the prologue is, don't think it's Whiskeyjack), the first time through I didn't get any of it.

That's also another part of it, there are so many tasty bits hidden in the books that don't mean anything to you, reading the book for the first time. By the time you get to the point that those bits would make sense and you'd have a nice 'aha! that was HIM back then, cool' etc. moments you already forgot most of it because it didn't seem important enough to remember it.

I know that is a problem that many high fantasy novels face, imo a good example is A Song of Ice and Fire that also doesn't use a lot of the usual Tolkien-inspired fantasy standards. When I started A Game of Thrones way back when I also had trouble at first, not knowing about The Others, the Starks, Winterfell, Rhaegar etc. but I don't remember it being quite as 'difficult' as Malazan.

This post has been edited by Panador: 29 May 2010 - 01:26 PM

[Lucky Revenant]

It's been a few years since I've read GOTM, and, like many others, I found myself very confused by it. The language, the way it just jumps right in, all of it was difficult for me. I will say that the fact that it liked to jump between locations didn't bother me, because I had been warned it does that, but that was one of very few things that didn't bother me somehow. And, yet, somehow I still loved it.

I must also say that I absolutely adore SE's style and the very particular way he words things. Generally, if something's there, it is there for a reason, even if you don't see it at first. Which is part of the reason rereads are so great with this series, actually.